Second In-Depth Blog Post [2022]

Welcome to my second in-depth blog post of 2022! Today I will be discussing a bit about my mentor, the wisdom I have gained and my progress so far. 

As my in-depth skill, tatreez, is a cultural practice, my mentor likely gained a lot of her experience with this craft through her family. During our last meeting, she showed me a project that her daughter was working on laying on the arm of her couch, showing just how this art is passed down from generation to generation of women. We did not discuss her past with this craft as much in our first few meetings as we were just trying to get started, but I do look forward to knowing more as she has mentioned some great community experiences with her other arts. 

So far I have gained a lot of wisdom from my mentor. She readily gives out advice on all matter of things even unrelated to this subject, but for the sake of conciseness, I will mention her emphasis on inspiration, flexibility and taking small steps. She showed me an Instagram account for an organization that promotes the preservation of Palestinian embroidery and helps employ women in difficult conditions to make money by cross-stitching

 on apparel that they sell. She says that she takes a lot of inspiration from the patterns they use and she also pointed out the amazing women that are working to make these beautiful pieces. She also said that if I chose to use slightly different materials that she would be fine with it because everybody does their craft a little differently. She is very flexible and open to feedback. Additionally, she mentioned that it is very okay to adjust things to make them beginner-friendly and she does not expect me to do things the hardest way (like starting with a harder fabric tension or lots of colours) right off the bat. This leads me to my next topic, which is about the facilitating and mentor skills I have gained from observing her.

Her emphasis on making sure she understands my perspective as a beginner is really admirable. Often when a person gets very good at a particular skill they forget that the people that they are teaching may struggle with aspects and sub-skills that come very easily to them, but my mentor is so experienced that she seems to know exactly what I might struggle with nad adjusts those aspects for me as she sees fit. She understands that it is okay for a beginner to start with very small, baby steps and work their way up. I have made my first baby step in the past few days, which is figuring out how the materials work with one another.

So far I have learned about the materials involved in this craft. I went out to purchase Aida Cloth (the fabric I will be using), tapestry needles (they have round ends) and a type of embroidery floss called Perle Cotton embroidery floss. This specific type of embroidery/cross-stitch thread is very common in this craft, and I will make sure to ask about the details of why in a later meeting (I was given some indication that it is size-related).  I learned that there are different sizes of Aida cloth based on the size of the gaps between the woven strands. The fabric is woven, so when you make a stitch you are supposed to put your needle in the gaps of the fabric. The Aida cloth has a numerical rating system and my mentor recommended size 14 for beginners due to differences in tension that she will explain in a later meeting. My mentor also showed me examples of tatreez designs and briefly talked about finding patterns and traditional embroidery colours.

Thank you for reading my second in-depth blog post of the year and I sincerely hope that it was intriguing and insightful for you!